Foundation Stones #2: The Lord with the Apostles — Christ Within You

They are the guys who gave us the four Gospels. Those four Gospels are what tell us about the Lord. Their proclamation of Him, the way they proclaimed Him is the truth once delivered. What if they’d gotten it wrong? What if they hadn’t gotten it right? What if they have said things crazy or opposite or not true or unreal or, what if they’d gone off into Gnosticism or were half-witted or who knows what they could have taught us? Now, everything that we know goes back to Him. You know, I’ve heard it said that if you go trace your lineage back far enough, you will eventually come to Adam. You’ll come to one man, Adam. That’s not true. If every one of us traced our lineage back far enough, the first time we would come to one human being would not be when we got to Adam. It’d be when we got to Noah. I bet you never thought about that, did you? You ever thought about that? Okay. Well, this is the way it is with us.

Before you, if we traced our lineage back before we got to the Lord Jesus Christ, we’d get to 12 men and there wouldn’t be anybody else. It’s those 12 men. And now, now I come to my point of the evening. What did the Lord Jesus Christ do in the light of redemption? His willingness to die on the cross to save us. His determination to bring forth among fallen men and redeemed men, to bring to them the fellowship of the Godhead. That is the church. To allow them to enter into this thing called the Christian life. That is to let them partake of the very life of God the Father and live by that life. That’s the Christian life. The life of the Christian, the fellowship of the Godhead, the church.

How will He prepare them? He’s got three jobs. He’s got to show them what a Christian is and how to be one. And I don’t mean live a good life and take care of your fellow man. He’s got to show them how to be a Christian. He’s got to teach them what the church is. And He’s got to raise them up to be workers the way He was raised up to be a worker. I can tell you how He did it. And I’m going to tell you something this time that’s interesting. What happened was organic, but boy, this time it’s organic from both directions. It’s organic. God is doing that which is organic to Him. And those three men are going to do what’s organic to them.

Now, you can’t guess what I’m saying, can you? Can’t imagine what it is I’m trying to communicate. Would you like to make a stab at it? Okay. I’m not sure what you said because of the fan, but let me get just tell you. Tom, how old were you when you got saved?

Member Audience: 21.

21, so before you were 21, did you ever have a hero? You must have had. A who? Lots of them. It was a singer. A singer. All right. Uh, an actor. No, a singer. Did you ever sing one of the songs the singer sang? You did. Did you by any chance try to sound like him? You did. And you still do. Any of you ever have an actor for a hero? Movie star. Oh, I know you did good and well. A movie star is a hero when you were young or even now. Yeah. Did you ever try to walk like him or talk like him?

When I was when a young boy, Errol Flynn was one of the heroes. You can’t imagine how many of us were trying to jump over balconies like Errol Flynn. That’s natural to the beast. It is the natural tendency. I think one of the wisest statements I ever heard in my life, a dear friend of mine in Tyler, Texas, said, “When we admire someone, we tend to imitate them, but what we tend to imitate the most is their worst characteristics.” Because you can’t imitate the good ones. It’s true. For instance, if there’s a godly person, the one thing you can’t do is be godly. So, what can you do? He talks with a lisp. You can talk with a lisp, right? He walks funny. You can walk funny. You may not be able to teach like him or preach like him or pray like him, but you can walk funny. If he has a southern accent, but of course, nobody in here has a southern accent. You can always imitate a southern accent.

When Billy Graham first became famous, you can’t imagine how many young men sounded identical to Billy Graham. For two or three years, half the preachers, half the young preachers coming up, you couldn’t tell the difference. They were tossing their Bible like him. And one of them was Gene Edwards. And one of them was Gene Edwards saying, “You better believe it.

I want you to know this. They watched him as a hawk watches the bug.” I would have said from the moment he woke up they watched him but that’s not true. Even while he slept, they watched him. Watched how he slept. Watched how he breathed while he slept. Sat there and ate their food, but out of the corner of their eye, they watched how he ate his food. And if he ate it a little different from them, then they ate that way. They watched when he got tired and that’s when they allowed themselves to get tired. If he got angry about something, finally they had a place to get angry. When he laughed, they all laughed. And I’m sure when he caught them doing this, in some way exposed them, they got very embarrassed, but I’m trying to make a point here and that this point is not small.

They were doing exactly what He wanted them to do. They were watching Him, and that’s why he called them to be with Him. He wanted them to watch Him. It was almost a dare. Watch Me. Watch Me talk. Watch Me think. Watch Me not think. Watch Me see when no others can see. Watch Me handle this situation. Watch Me handle that situation. Watch Me pray. Watch Me not pray. Watch Me fast. Watch Me revel. Watch Me laugh. Watch Me cry.

Behold My every ways, but most of all, watch Me carry on a daily relationship with My Father in here. Praise the Lord. Watch Me carry on fellowship with my Father right in here for three years. Watch the fact that what’s going on is inside, not outside. That it’s not the cup, it’s what’s in the cup. It’s not the coffin, it’s what’s in the coffin. It’s not the kingdom. It’s the kingdom. It’s not the Father. It’s the Father. It’s not prayer. It’s prayer. It’s not hearing. It’s hearing. It’s not seeing. It’s seeing. It’s not listening. It’s listening. It’s not a big voice. It’s a little voice. It’s not righteousness. It’s righteousness. It’s not life and strength and will. It’s life and strength and will. It’s not water. It’s water. It’s not a river. It’s a river. It’s not a well springing up. It’s a well springing up. Praise the Lord. Thank you, David. I believe you’re understanding. It’s not my Father, it’s my Father. It’s not love, it’s love, and the kingdom is within you and the heavens are within you. And they kept watching this and they finally began to figure something else out. He is not totally here. Part of Him is somewhere else.

You know when Jesus talked to Nicodemus, I am certain that John was present. Can you imagine how John’s mouth must have fallen open when the Lord Jesus said, “The Son of Man who came out of the heavenlies, the Son of Man who is now in the heavenlies,” jaw lip, and probably a light turned on. They began to figure out all sorts of things, that this One  lived in another realm while He lived in this one, that His body and His soul might be here, but His spirit was somewhere else. And they began to learn that He was living by life sources of which they had no privilege, that there were things were going on inside of Him that opened up into whole different realms, that they were dealing with a species not their own. And this is exactly what He wanted them to do.